The easiest way to ensure compliance with health and safety legislation

We are all told that complying with health and safety legislation is straightforward and easy. However, if you work or run a large organisation you’ll know that it can be very difficult, hence why you are reading this article. You need to provide a safe workplace for your staff, identify and control hazards, train and supervise your staff, keep them informed of health and safety processes and record all accidents and report all serious injuries.

Non-compliance can lead to accidents, injuries, large financial penalties, inspections and audits, imprisonment, destroy your brand’s value and market reputation, or your company could be shut down completely! It is vital you have an effective strategy in place, so how can you ensure compliance in the easiest way possible? Do any of the problems below sound familiar to you?

You find it difficult to make sure audits/assessments/checks are carried out routinely to maintain a safe place to work?

You have your processes in place to keep your workplace safe, but the problem is that they aren’t always done on time or they are not done at all!

With the help of digital solutions, you can automate checklists with a time limit to ensure that they are completed.

These can be used for all kinds of things such as: Checking staff toilets are in good condition, checking machinery or equipment, or ensuring stock rooms are clear.

To control hazards, any checks which are marked with a cross will be flagged to head office.

For example with Oplift Review, you can set a checklist which should be done daily, weekly or monthly. If it is something like ensuring the warehouse is free of hazards for morning deliveries, you can set the time limit for it to be done every evening before 6 pm. If the checklist has not been completed then this will be flagged to head office who can ask the relevant person why.

With new digital solutions, you can send notifications straight to your employee’s devices to remind them to get their checks done. If you set the checklist to be completed by 6 pm simply send out a notification an hour before. With Oplift Engage you can link your notification to the checklist to make it as easy as possible for staff to complete it.

Virgin Media reduced the time it took to do their workplace checklists by 80% after implementing Oplift Engage.

Your staff think you are being over the top with your precaution processes?

One of the reasons this can happen is because staff members don’t realise how important it is that they are done, and they aren’t fully aware of the consequences which you or they could face if they are not completed. To overcome this you must ensure that you train them properly to make sure that they understand.

Training during work time can be difficult, especially if you work in a busy environment which is why we created our microlearning app, for clients who have time-poor staff. It breaks learning down into one to five-minute learning modules, meaning staff can play at any point during the day.

Gamification is another great way to make learning engaging and ensure that it happens every day. Our gamification tool called Albert gives your staff three daily challenges for them to complete, Virgin Media saw an increase of 7.4% in their knowledge ratings!

Your staff don’t understand your health and safety policies?

Avoid using complex language or jargon as this will immediately disengage employees, use simple language and make them as easy to follow as possible.

To do this, break them down into stages with clear section titles. With Oplift, you can publish articles as a single item or break them down into several stages. This makes it easier for navigation and simple for users to follow, rather than having one mass document which is hard to digest.

Employees don’t know where to look for health and safety advice?

One of the guidelines for adequate health and safety is to ensure staff have access to health and safety advice, it is essential that you have this available.

If you do have these do your employees know where they are and are they easily accessible? If you asked one of your employees right now to tell you where to find any health and safety help or advice would they know right away, or would they struggle to think of where or even worse not know at all!

It is essential that you structure how you are going to organise your health and safety help and advice, and put them in a logical order which is going to make sense to your employees.

With Oplift, you can add your articles to specific categories to keep them organised e.g. safety, lifting equipment, setting up equipment. These can then all be kept under a parent category of ‘Health and safety’ which can show as a tile on the dashboard. This means that your employees can get to your policies within 3 taps, it doesn’t get much easier than that!

You struggle getting employees to read the health and safety articles which you send out?

To ensure your whole team are compliant you need clarification that they have read your health and safety articles.

The acknowledgements feature on Oplift Engage means you can be notified when staff have read certain articles.

However, one acknowledgement is not always enough, sometimes you need health and safety articles to be re-acknowledged. For example, a health and safety policy may need to be read once per year but a code of conduct policy will need to be read once per month.

Oplift’s frequency feature on acknowledgements means you can set how often you would like your policies and procedures to be read.

Staff aren’t doing their health and safety reports because they think that they take too long to do?

Do your staff have to carry out their reports on paper, then upload the report to a system, then share it on another system? All in all creating a long, frustrating process?

The simple answer is that you need to simplify the reporting process. You need a platform which allows staff to create, publish and share their report all from one easy place.

Oplift Review allows your staff to do all admin work on the shop floor, meaning they don’t need to schedule time for back-office tasks. Staff can capture insights quickly and easily and add photos or comments all from their mobile app meaning they can simply tap and send.

Oplift allows you to digitally transform and radically change your business. Our platforms work together to change every facet of your organisation. Everything from operations, company documents, internal communications, and staff interactions. With Oplift you get peace of mind that your business stays compliant, in the easiest way possible, get in touch today to see how we can help you!